Two more variants of Brahmos missile soon

BrahMos Aerospace has developed two more versions -- air and underwater – of its supersonic missile BrahMos and is on course to develop hypersonic missiles that could cruise at speeds of 5-7 Mach, a top scientist has said.

Already four versions -- ship-to-ship, land-to-land, land-to-ship and ship-to-land -- had already been developed by the agency and the two new variants were now ready and in various stages of approval and test firing, BrahMos Aerospace chief executive and managing director A Sivathanu Pillai told  media-persons in Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on Thursday.

"We are very close to the launch of the under water version and the navy had to ready the requisite platform for the testing," Pillai said. For the air version, the development systems were ready and the integrated test would be undertaken after mock firing.

However, the launch of the air version and commercial production would take some time as certain structural modifications were to be made in the Russian-built Sukhoi aircraft.

"We have already completed 15 flights successfully and are waiting for the availability of the modified design in Sukhoi which has to reduce other pay loads," Pillai said.

A special high power committee comprising of experts from the Air Force, the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and BrahMos Aerospace had been constituted to carry out the modifications.

Pillai said the company would also take up the BrahMos II project under a major expansion programme to produce hypersonic missiles that could cruise at speeds of 5-7 Mach.

The present versions travels at a speed of 2.8 Mach, (Mach 1 is the velocity of sound)